According to my father there were
No real rules to the game but suddenly
All the young children would break
Into a run, yelling "Up the Hill
With Buffalo Bill!" One day you found
You were too old for this and went off
To learn Nine O'Cat or Stickball or
A sort of baseball with anywhere up to
Seven outfielders and three shortstops.
My father had sometimes occasion
To draw angels -- usually in small groups
Of two or three but sometimes crowds of them.
Usually, they were stick figures with wings
And puzzled expressions. I see them at times
Looking just as he pictured them. I suspect
They didn't always look like this but assumed
My father knew what angels should look like
And adapted themselves accordingly
One of the Japanese gods of thunder
Is a baby. When he gets in a temper other gods
Take turns carrying him up and down ladders
Imaginary saints deliver miracles
Almost indistinguishable from those
Of real ones; they charge less and
Rarely brag about it afterwards.
Because I once absent-mindedly asked
Teshub for rain he and the other Hittite Gods
Consider me a devoté. They turn up --
All thousand of them -- at the edge of my dreams
Or leave me flyers, offering to perform miracles.
Except for Tarhunt and Teshub, they've mostly
Forgotten who they were and what they did.
I plan just before I'm supposed to die
To slip in among them. Death's eyes aren't what they were
And acting purposeless? I've been practicing for years.
In the triptych's righthand panel
A tiny figure rows desperately
Across a broad summer's lake
If he ever reaches the shore
He'll cross into the central panel
Where a geisha, ten times his size,
Stands, wearing a shimmering kimono
With a blue-green carp swimming on it.
Boat and all, she'll lift him,
And place him gently in the last panel
Where an umbrella with a traveler beneath it
Struggles through the snow.
